After spending three hours playing Blades of Fire, I’m already on the hook for more. Developer MercurySteam, who previously brought us the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow games and, most recently, Metroid Dread, gave us the chance to play three hours of its new action RPG at a real-life forge. It finds itself at a crossroads between the interwoven structure of classic Dark Souls and the combat-led exploration of modern action games such as PlayStation’s rebooted God of War series, but its modular weapon forging system and rewarding positional damage are enough to catch my attention.
Blades of Fire casts you as Aran de Lira, a mysterious figure who grew up the son of the King’s Ward Commander. A dark spell cast by the newly crowned Queen Nerea has turned all steel to stone, leaving her army of abominations the sole wielders of divine metal and without opposition. Now living out in the woods, Aran is forced into action when an old friend, Abbot Dorin, delivers unto him a legendary tool – “The last of the seven hammers that forged the world.” With it, you are able to craft weaponry capable of standing up to the might of the Queen’s troops, and thus you set out to bring her tyrannical reign to an end.
In practice, Blades of Fire is an action RPG set in a sprawling, interconnected fantasy world. At its core is a detailed, modular weapon crafting system that allows you to choose exactly how you approach combat. This blacksmithing minigame is a step up from the likes of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Skyrim. When you decide to make a new weapon, you start out with a base type – these fit into broad categories such as daggers, greatswords, and polearms, with more defined subtypes such as flamberges, war picks, warhammers, and even named options like the ‘Trollslayer’ greatsword.
Then, you must choose everything from its blade shape to the handle length, pommel style, and even the materials used to craft it. To start with, you’ll be restricted to basic wood and steel types, but eventually you’ll unlock the ability to use stronger materials to craft more powerful weapons. Each tweak has an impact on how the weapon handles. Opt for a longer handle on your spear and you’ll have more reach, but your attack speed and the size of your parry windows will fall. A sword made from heavier metal will deal more damage and require less sharpening, but you’ll tire out more quickly when using it.
Once you’re satisfied with the balance of your weapon, you’ll perform the hammering process. You’re shown the outline of your chosen blade and must carefully hammer it into shape by adjusting the angle, weight, and impact of your strikes. This is just involved enough to be fun and a little challenging without demanding a frustrating level of perfection – but you’ll want to get it right, because your success determines how many times that weapon can be repaired before it breaks for good.
With your weapon complete, you’re also given the chance to name it. MercurySteam CEO and game director Enric Álvarez tells me this whole process was designed to create an “intimate relationship between you and your blades – even if they’re going to die, because they are. Their fate is to be broken, because that’s life.” You’ll also drop your active weapon when you die, and must return to the spot where it fell to claim it back (although Álvarez assures me it won’t disappear if you fall again without collecting it). Of course, with the right materials you could always make another, perhaps even more to your liking than the last.
All this crafting only works if the results feel impactful on the battlefield. Fortunately, this is perhaps where Blades of Fire shines most. The action hinges on a positional attack system – playing with a controller, you use the four face buttons to target the head, left, right, or lower parts of your opponent. Hold down the button and you’ll unleash a stronger, slower move that, in many cases, can break through your opponent’s guard, while a tap of the right trigger switches between movesets such as thrusting or sweeping with a spear.
For the most part, this bears the hallmarks of classic soulslike combat – spacing, blocking, dodging, parrying, and watching for multiple enemies approaching from unexpected directions. Where it stands out is that your enemy’s body type, armor, and actions will change which of your attacks are effective. Slashing a warrior in full plate armor with a sword will do almost nothing, but a well-placed spear thrust or a hefty hammer blow to the side will prove vastly more effective. In many cases, these weaknesses will shift mid-fight as the enemy changes their fighting style.
It’s therefore almost essential to be swapping between weapons during combat to deal with what you’re facing. Faced with gremlins that pogo-bounce on flexible flamberges towards you, I employ low, sweeping attacks to knock them to the ground. Against a giant, heavily armored, hammer-wielding Mayhem Warmonger, I sidestep his crushing blows to bring precision sword strikes down onto his exposed skull. To help you out, highlights will show parts of your target that are vulnerable to attack from your current weapon – and if they’re entirely framed in red, you might want to switch to something else.
Blades of Fire also makes smart use of stamina. As it drains, your attacks quickly become notably more lethargic, and you’ll leave yourself open for longer after each swing. Bad stamina management can be a rapid killer, but by holding up your guard for just a second you’ll rapidly restore your stock to full. Environmental features such as high ground play a part – fighting from above uses less energy – and scoring a successful parry earns you a brief window where you can counterattack with no stamina cost.
The early enemy designs also show plenty of promise. The initial goons, the Queen’s Hounds, are pretty easy to handle but just unpredictable enough for things to stay interesting, capable of varying their attack timings to keep you on your toes. Water elementals can leap from the ground to catch you unaware. At one point, I fight a troll, which is capable of regenerating its health by turning to stone. To stop this, I’m told to use a heavy attack while it’s stunned, which slices its face clean off its head. It’s delightfully grotesque, and does prevent the healing, but doesn’t stop it from continuing to fight until its last breath.
Narratively, Aran’s initial goal is to use his newfound power to seek out and kill the queen. Joining you is young companion Adso, which provides a very by-the-numbers duo of gruff older warrior and bookish, sarcastic youth. It’s a dynamic not unlike 2018’s God of War, but I found it a little more light-hearted. With his ability to read the Ancient Forger tongue, you’ll need Adso’s help to overcome certain obstacles and activate magical gates. If you’d rather not listen to him the rest of the way, however, you can send him back to camp at any time and explore alone.
The world is also very interconnected. From the early moments there are numerous potential paths through levels, with more opening up as you find entry points to buildings and open connecting gates. “They are very elaborate,” Álvarez remarks, “the further you go, the more labyrinthian they become. Using your map, paying attention to things, putting marks in different spots to remember is going to become very, very important because it’s a huge game. You’re going to get lost very often – very, very often.”
While you can hit a button to ponder your next objective at any time, you won’t get explicit instructions on where to go. “We wanted the player to feel, and know, exactly what the main characters know,” Álvarez explains. “We don’t want to give you extra clues beyond the game itself.” Even in the early hours, I find myself having to pause for a moment to consider my map and the instructions I’ve been given to figure out where to go next, but in a way that feels pleasing rather than irritating.
During my adventures, I encounter two other notable characters. The first is moody old forger Glinda, a forest-dweller with a pronounced Scottish accent who lives in a house atop a massive, flying beetle and is described by the game as “Mad Granny.” The other is a small, skeletal child that you encounter in the depths of the vast Crimson Fort – you’ll have to do some work to track him down and win his trust, but he’s adorable.
So far, Blades of Fire feels like a real ‘double-A’ treat, something I say with love. It’s not doing anything especially revolutionary, and it’s not perfectly polished. Enemies sometimes get caught on the environment, or teleport back to their starting locations if I try to tease them too far away. But the combat hook is distinct enough to catch my eye, and landing blows that cleave entire arms off or cause heads to explode in a fountain of crimson is cartoonishly pleasing. Its world is pretty and feels rewarding to explore, with little treats and secrets around every corner. As my three-hour session came to a close, I would quite happily have sat there a long while more.
Blades of Fire launches Thursday May 22 on PC via the Epic Games Store, priced at $59.99 / £49.99. You can buy it ahead of launch at a 10% discount, meaning you’ll pay just $53.99 / £44.99. Find it here.
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